


Aberration

by levitatethis



Category: True Blood
Genre: Angst, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-09-05
Updated: 2009-09-05
Packaged: 2017-10-06 19:16:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/56914
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/levitatethis/pseuds/levitatethis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For Bill, surviving is a combination of remembering, accepting and taking back control.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Aberration

_“Oh, I need the darkness   
The sweetness   
The sadness   
The weakness   
Oh, I need this.   
I need a lullaby   
A kiss goodnight   
Angel sweet, love of my life.   
Well is it dark enough?   
Can you see me?   
Do you want me?   
Can you reach me?   
Oh, I’m leaving   
You better shut your mouth   
And hold your breath   
And kiss me now   
And catch your death   
Oh, I mean this.” _  
**-Natalie Merchant, **_**My Skin**_

 

He tips the rounded edge of the bottle’s neck against his lips and angles it back. The warmed liquid flows past his welcoming lips and rises in his mouth where he is careful not to swallow. Yet.

He presses his lips together, still holding the bottle flush against his mouth, and consciously feels the exact weight of the thick drink on his tongue. Closing his eyes for a second, he channels his focus on the taste that penetrates his taste buds and sparks memories that flash through his brain.

It is not real blood, but it will do. It is enough to remind him of the authentic artifact and _that_ is what squeaks open the padlocked doors that make this mainlining life such a tragic undertaking.

Mind over matter—but it _does_ matter. To deny a basic tenant of his re-existence is a statement, bold and deluded. To crave what he should have is a simple fact. But there is no such thing as ‘just a taste.’

Tru Blood is relatively generic. A single consistency, it stays what amounts to a life but does not pack a punch. Each sip lacks the intensity of _true_ blood made all the more flavourable by the intimacy of the connection established from honest-to-goodness hemoglobin; the kind that flows light to thick and coats the inside of his mouth, nestling on his tongue and racing life down his throat; the kind that opens his mind and strengthens his limbs, beating out eternity in place of an exorcised soul.

No people are the same.

He remembers and carries with him the stories of those whose flesh he has scoured deviously us well as those who offered themselves freely for his (and their) pleasure. Each one is a part of him in some way. Bound by blood. Forever.

Slowly he swallows and feels the modified drink move down his throat, quenching his thirst but not his desire. Encouraging the last of the sticky remnants down, he places the bottle on top of the piano and rests his hands on the keys. The stony silence in the house is all too stifling. He stares at his hands as if willing them to play a note, any one that will lead the rest like the Pied Piper.

But no tune struggles forth, no note cracks the surface.

In the end the only melody that plays is the one in Bill’s head.

 

************ ********** ********** ********** **********   
**

Lorena.

Creator. Destroyer.

She is the tainted poison copper overload. Her blood tastes strange and its wetness across his lips, soaking his tongue and slipping down his throat, is strikingly different than the blood of the dead that reddened his hands in battle.

Hansel into the fire; he is forced along the slow drive from repulsion to insatiable want. The change approaches unexpectedly as he lies hypnotized and overpowered by her form over top his, dripping her mythological essence into his body. She demands consummation and in the precarious line between life and death he is reborn as _other_.

Compulsion is bred. Bled.

The bestowment of a forever future means letting go of the past—painfully, sadly, reverently. The excruciating lesson is repeated each time her blood enters his body like a sacrament. She is the bitter drug he can’t stop taking and self-flagellating resentment becomes unfettered anger, and eventually acceptance. He revels in the underworld, giving himself over to it. He is madness.

Even away from her—cast out, broken free (but what she had not told him was how easily she could make him come back to her like a good little pet)—he can recall her smell and touch to his mind, the brutality of her claiming him, by simply closing his eyes. Channeling her selfish cruelty, he lashes out at any who cross his path. He easily falls in with a merciless crowd that take immense pleasure in paying no heed to consequences. They are reckless and wild and he is his maker’s sire. She exists on the razor’s edge of his periphery, waiting.

Is it the last remnants of humanity clinging with desperation that slow his otherwise certain demise as they fight on behalf of the part of him that fought for honour and his family, now long gone?

He glances askew from the path ahead and steps sideways. Lorena’s single-minded drive becomes a stubborn blessing in his veins and a new calling is revealed.

Existing between two realms, Bill stands alone.

 

************ ********** ********** ********** ************

 

She is the last human he takes forcefully, and even then it is with great remorse.

Over a hundred years has taught him to distinguish between the vast arrays of taste—_flavours_—that make up the human race. It is far more than blood types (which is why Tru Blood can never truly replace the real thing). Each person brings something to the experience, like an accent, the faint hint of a twist.

Excitement. Fear. They are all intoxicating enhancements.

They are also reminders of a destructive existence begat of fury and self-pity.

Jessica’s blood has a bite at the end. Her panic, devastation and curiosity taint it sour but delicious. He wants to stop (wishes he had never started) but can’t beneath the glare of watchful eyes delivering retribution by way of his punishment; can’t as the desire for liquid perfection rumbles through his veins appreciatively, instinctively, as naturally as this perversion grants a no soul lost soul.

It is disgusting, the wrong being so right.

The inescapable truth is that this is what they are. This is what _he_ is.

Take.   
Command.   
Revel.   
Use and abuse.

No. She is his overdose and he vows she will be his last transgression. He memorizes the tartness over the sweet as if it is some crackerjack behaviour therapy prize. Returning to old ways—to take without consent—is unacceptable—

Jessica squirms her resistance and he tightens his jaw.

_They stab it with their steely knives, but they just can’t kill the beast._

 

************ ********** ********** ********** ************

 

Eric stares him down from the other side of the room while vampires and some ‘walking on the wild side’ humans mingle across the space in between. Bill swallows nervously and remembers fifty years earlier.

Power in a vintage bouquet.

Unexpected, it frightens and enamours him. Doing a job for the Queen—a good job— meant Bill resided in the good graces of Her Majesty to be called upon as a trusted subject. It also meant that the eternal blessing and curse of immortality could be undone. Nine lives could run out.

He should have died. Finally. Long past his human self’s due date. He wanted to until Eric’s blood, coursing from a self-inflicted bite to his wrist and held to his mouth, filled his body and lay a new skin over his burned one.

Vampire blood offers fast healing. Old vampire blood can work a miracle.

Eric was bold and strong. From the first taste to the last drop it held its own unapologetically, never wavering.

It took over and the renewal it awoken in Bill thrummed a need for more. Eric’s blood rushed images to mind of what could be. Undeniable. The weight of him was light but dramatic. Tasting him made Bill, even if only for a moment, unstoppable.

He had to distance himself from it lest he be pulled in by the undertow. Without a word Eric could be very convincing. Bill was sure that his being saved worked twofold. It made the Queen happy and Eric dangled a seductive possibility at the stretched out end of Bill’s grasp.

You know you want it.

“Fall in line, Bill. This _charade_ you’ve been playing is amusing but hardly worth the time and effort. Why deny what makes us so much better than these…miscreants.”

He likes that Eric doesn’t quite get him. It means that the hope he still senses in himself is not misplaced.

The problem is that he gets Eric.

 

************ ********** ********** ********** ************

 

She is his most potent revelation.

He finds he is at a loss for words to describe how and why she is different from all the other humans he has taken into himself, besides the fact that she offers herself to him.

Sookie makes him yearn for forever. He loves the strength she possesses in her human form but increasingly the desire to turn her, to ensure eternity together, sharpens his teeth more often than he considers safe.

The unique edge to her blood, at once enticing and unnerving, is a trip he can’t escape—as he if he wants to. He wants to fold himself up in her and fit into the angled curves of her body. He wants to protect her from the life he has thrust upon her by the (misfortunate) act of falling for her and can feel the unflinching love she carries for him (and no one else) in return.

They are each other’s firsts. He is her first love. She is his first ray of light at the end of a midnight black tunnel. She is his hope in human form and he clings greedily, wantingly, happily. He had forgotten how to smile, and not the placating kind but the uncontrollable grin that lights up even an unanimated visage.

The smooth sting of her acquiescence envelops his throat, fusing into him with every swallow. A tangy heat accompanies every red cell as it floods forth across his tongue, coating his teeth and figuratively rushing warmth across his cold body.

She is his belief system rediscovered and he knows that she could slip away—walk away—at any time despite declarations to the contrary. But he will fight that battle when the time comes. For now he basks in the calm she lays over his storm. Each moment with her is a stolen one but he has suffered for so long before that he wills the good to be his salvation.

A fool’s paradise.

Maybe if he is cruel to be kind he can spare them both—

“Bill, what I wouldn’t give to wake up with you—just once.”

He sighs; dropping his shoulders, and gently cups the side of her face with his hands. Resting his forehead against hers he softly says, “If I could will it to be so, I would.”

_Know that much is true_ is left unspoken.

 

************ ********** ********** ********** ********** **

 

Memories are bittersweet. They run rancid when a melancholy mood strikes, digging in its roots, and bottled blood doesn’t make the grade. But mostly remembrances pang the lonely resignation he was once far too used to for what was once his.

Bill thinks he _is_ the harbinger of death with only the tease of life to get his hopes up and stroke his appetite. There are too many consequences and existence has been doled out as uneven steps taken tentatively yet with daring verve as if thumbing his nose at the universe buys him respect and time.

Others have come and gone.

Distance affords Bill the chance to see the imperfections he once addressed with annoyed flirtation. Not that it damn well matters. He is just as in love now as he was then—probably more so because now it’s real, screwed up and raw. And no longer his.

If he sticks with Tru Blood he proves (to her) he is different than the others. But without anything to hold him to this human world why should he deny who he is? What does it get him in the end but his past thrown in his face and his ‘goodness’ regarded as a falsehood. He can win his place back, but with whom? Where does the pendulum swing, leaning heavy?

He wonders what he himself tastes like. Is he putrid? Fermented? Does he linger on the tongue or move on with a subtle aroma of more? Maybe he disappears all together. Or is there an aftertaste of sweetness that curls up the lips into a sated smile?

He lurks in the midst between light and dark and tries to decide what exactly it is that comes naturally—choosing a side or remaining in the solitude of a no man’s land.

Another sip.

Tru Blood curbs the appetite.

But the craving growls louder.

 

[ ](http://pics.livejournal.com/levitatethis/pic/000bq6fx/)

_'A heart is a fragile thing. That’s why we protect them so   
vigorously, give them away so rarely and why it means   
so much when we do. Some hearts are more fragile   
than others. Purer somehow. Like crystal in a world of   
glass, even the way they shatter is beautiful.'_


End file.
